Familiar sounds can be found in the strangest of places

Sebastián Vásquez Cipriani

2026

In this hybrid-documentary film, diasporic Latin American performers are invited to reenact a cassette correspondence between a family separated by migration.

Inspired by the phenomenon of tape letters that proliferated between the 1960s-1990s, Sebastián Vásquez Cipriani, Liz Cordoba and Cesar Puente stage an exchange that took place but was not archived. Together, they re-record messages between the filmmaker’s grandmother Esther and uncle Felipe after Felipe’s emigration from Peru to Switzerland in 1988. The exercise that ensues transforms the recording process into a space where personal histories intersect and migrant experiences are collectively negotiated.

Treating filmmaking as an avenue towards real encounters, the project weaves together lived and imagined experiences from its subjects, cast and crew.

About the artists:

Sebastián Vásquez Cipriani is an artist, filmmaker and organiser of shared spaces. His work is often collaborative, rooted in curiosity, imagination and relational exchange. He explores a space between fiction and documentary where actors and non-actors, fictitious or real characters, ghosts and other apparitions are able to surface in parallel. Through narrative, essayistic and hybrid means, Sebastián shares personal stories that reflect on diasporic identities, kinship and intergenerational memory. Originally from Perú, he brings forward anecdotes, superstitions, a love for boleros and radical nostalgia.

He shares his and other maker’s films via @circulo_roto